Staff Editorial: The Poly bounces back

Hey there, it’s your friendly campus newspaper, and we’d like to give everyone an update on our status as the fall semester comes to a close. It’s no secret that The Poly had a rough start to this academic year. We started the semester in debt to the Rensselaer Union, and complications ensued. We’ve always been a self-funded venture, but it turns out our advertisements weren’t fully covering our costs. To help the paper restructure itself, we decided to switch to printing every other week for the current semester, with online issues published during off-weeks. This allowed for more time to work on each issue and provided more downtime so that other parts of the paper could be worked on. For example, our different printing schedule allowed us to redo our advertising strategy, pursue more recruiting opportunities, make more connections, and make contact with more sources.

It was a tough semester, but we believe we have come out stronger as a result. The Poly now has much stronger internal organization, accountability, and efficiency. There are still things to work on; we are still looking to expand our coverage, particularly with regards to clubs and investigative journalism.

Last night, we went before the Executive board to ask for a financial safety net. Our proposal was a modest pool of money, from which we would draw on a strictly as-needed basis, if we ever failed to have our advertising revenue cover our printing costs for a given issue. So far, that has only happened once this semester. A financial safety net would prevent situations like our current situation from occurring again. Additionally, we have asked for subsidy for Poly credits, which would further stabilize our finances. Poly credits are an advertising means clubs can use to place ads in the paper, at no cost to the club.

Some of you may remember that it was our intention to pay the Union back for the money they lent to us. That still is our intention; the safety net would only be on an as-needed, per-issue basis. The profits from more financially-successful issues would still go towards paying back the Union.

After the meeting, a decision was approved to allow The Polytechnic to print on a weekly basis, and all profits made would cover future issues, as long as The Poly makes a cumulative profit at the end of the academic year.

Thank you all who read this paper and this column each week, it makes it all worth it for us whenever we see a stranger reading something we put our hearts into each week. For anyone who may have any questions about The Poly, feel free to contact us at poly@rpi.edu with suggestions or comments.